Using abortion pills could see you slung into prison for 14 years. How is this insane situation allowed to persist?

It wasn’t a man confessing to a bank robbery. It was 200 women confessing to the PSNI last July that they’d helped import pills to the North to procure abortions. Importing the pills carries a sentence of five years; taking them could mean life.

Procurement isn’t a specific offence in the Republic, but using abortion pills, or otherwise having an abortion, could see you being put away for 14 years.

The action in the North had been organised by Alliance for Choice (AfC). All the confessions were genuine. The intention was to show solidarity and draw attention to the case of a Belfast woman, in her 30s, who had been charged with importing Mifepristone and Misoprostol for use by her pregnant teenage daughter. Best used in combination, Mifepristone and Misoprostol will safely trigger an abortion up to nine weeks into a pregnancy.

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